


Loyalty

by BalloonArcade



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 17:18:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11235621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BalloonArcade/pseuds/BalloonArcade
Summary: After Combiner Wars, Prowl falls in love with Sideswipe based on experiencing Sunstreaker’s memories of him in the combined form of Optimus Maximus. And Sideswipe is all…“buh? Why is Prowl always hanging around me now?”





	Loyalty

“So you were an enforcer back before the war?”

Sideswipe scowled toward his superior officer placing a cube of energon in front of him. “Didn’t you read my file?”

Prowl’s door wings twitched.

“…I read Sunstreaker’s.” 

 Sideswipe stood up from the table and stormed away. Everyone always noticed Sunstreaker over him.

~8~8~8~8~8~8~8~

“I don’t get Prowl.” Sideswipe grumbled as he reassembled his surface to air mounted missile launcher. “The mech gives me grunt work the entire war, and now suddenly he’s around every corner trying to make small talk.”

Arcee chuckled dryly beside him, “Prowl’s complicated. He has seen too far behind the curtain of war, and learned to pull the strings. The mech wanted to be a NAIL.”

Grabbing the nozzle of compressed gas from beside him, Sideswipe blew out the never ending layer of dust that accumulated in his weapon’s components on this dirt ball.

“How’d you know so much about Prowl? You two BFFs or something?”

That made Arcee bark out a laugh. 

“I don’t have friends.”

Sideswipe squawked as he looked at her. “What do you call me?”

Arcee’s optics drifted up and down his frame then locked over his shoulder and smirked, “Access to a jet pack.”

“No way,” Sideswipe objected, as he snapped back in the final component for his missile launcher, “Bob gets this when I offline.”

“…You’re giving it to your brother’s bug?” 

“Of course.” Sideswipe smirked as he took his newly reassembled weapon and looked through the sight, targeting it on an approaching Prowl, “It’ll piss Sunstreaker off.”

~8~8~8~8~8~8~8~

“What the frag do you want from me Prowl?” Sideswipe snapped, and Prowl knew it was coming after his repeated attempts to speak to the red mech in any casual setting failed.

Under his gaze, Prowl worked his intake as he struggled to put what he felt for Sideswipe into words.

What he had come to Earth to say.

What he rolled through his processor as he pumped his own spike in his hand, and thrust his fingers in his valve to silence his battle computer as he called out the red warrior’s name.

"Loyalty." Prowl blurted out as his spark raced, "I've never felt such uncompromising loyalty...I...after everything - I questioned that Cybertronians were even capable of that."

"Pretty sure you had a green and purple fan club I heard about.” Smirking, Sideswipe crossed his arms in front of himself. 

"They..." Prowl hesitated, data ghosts of adoration in his processor whispered what they loved about him. Shaking his head in denial, he tried to push them away, and he grasped for a fraction of what he had felt from Sunstreaker when the mech looked at Sideswipe. "They loved the wrong things. They loved what I became. They loved...what I could continue to do." He finished in a self horrified whisper.

Blue optics narrowed at him. 

"And after all that, you had room to fit Sunstreaker's big fat ego in your helm with your fancy battle computer and what?" Sideswipe loomed over him as he dropped his arms to his sides, and snarled down at Prowl, "Thought you'd come gawk at the twin that is always second best? Waiting for me to frag up too?"

Resetting his vocalizer under the intensity of Sideswipe's fury, the betrayal behind his optics seared, and Prowl still couldn't find the words to explain.

His spark twisted and grasped for a connection that was missing. Sunstreaker had shut Sideswipe out when he got promoted as his commander.

When he finally opened it, to scream and cling to his twin after the trauma of the Headmasters…

The damage had been done.

There had been nothing reaching back. 

And when it came time to say a final good bye to Sideswipe as he sacrificed himself in his guilt to explode the only bridge to the Autobot base, being descended upon by the swarm -

He made optic contact with Sideswipe screaming after him, and didn’t even try to reach back to him for fear of the void he might feel.

"That's what I thought." Sideswipe spat, fists clenched tight as he turned to walk away. 

Spark sinking, Prowl replayed the memories that had become locked in his mind. 

Sideswipe's smile. 

Sideswipe's laugh. 

Sideswipe's joy. 

Sideswipe's pain. 

"He hid you." Uncontrolled, the whisper echoing of awe and devotion resonated only to his audials. 

Correcting his posture, Prowl assumed command. 

"He hid you." He declared louder at the retreating mech, "As your commanding officer, he hid you the entire war."

Sideswipe scoffed, flipping his middle finger up without turning around. "Grunt work is hardly safe."

"But it's well below your skill level."

The red mech walking away from him froze mid-step, and slowly turned his head back to Prowl.

Emboldened, Prowl took a step forward. 

"As soon as the two of you enlisted with the Autobots, Sunstreaker started to drift from you."

Sideswipe narrowed his optics, and Prowl took another step.

"While you were meeting new mechs, and integrating yourself in their social circles like everyone else, he was doing extra sessions in the simulators."

Sideswipe’s mouth opened, then snapped shut. 

And Prowl walked forward.

"While you were recharging, he was sneaking off to study tactics."

Black helm shook in denial, and Prowl took the final step to be arm’s length away from him. 

"He couldn't live with himself. He couldn't bare the thought that if he didn't give his best, that if he didn't give his all, if he skimped out on that extra five breems...that _your talents_ would be seen and you'd be placed in greater danger." 

_Prowl would have attached strings._

The thought of what could have been once he had seen the full range of Sideswipe’s talents from Sunstreaker’s mind...haunted him for how he would have used the red mech before him. 

Twisted him.

Broken him.

That was not the mech he thought of as he moaned out his name alone in his room.

"Selfish prick." Sideswipe whispered but there was no acid to it. 

They stood, awkwardly avoiding each other’s gaze, as the cool breeze blew around them.

Eventually, Sideswipe broke the silence.

"The old senate Prowl. They tried to keep us apart." There was a haunted pain there, deep wounds that Prowl had lived through Sunstreaker's perspective. 

"I know."

The twin's spark had split among the sentio metallico of their hot spot. Their frames had been literally molded from the same metal. 

Sparks were said to have a conjunx endura-like bond with their frame...

Prowl had watched time and time again through Sunstreaker’s perspective, at Sideswipe being formed under the guiding hands of the blacksmiths. 

On the same table beside him. 

The both of them kept trying to merge their living metal and take the same form as one.

The first thing Sunstreaker watched Sideswipe do as he took his final form, was to online his optics and smile at him. 

Prowl had never felt such uncompromising loyalty as when he shared his mind - his very being - with Sunstreaker in the combined form of Optimus Maximus. He... hadn't known it was actually possible to care about someone so much. 

He had thought he had once, with Tumbler.

Attachments beyond colleagues or alliances, under Nova Prime had not been encouraged. 

The twins had literally formed with a deep attachment to each other down to their very sparks and metal. The old corrupt senate actively discouraged it between them.

The irony was, when the old system was toppled and nothing was stopping them, Sunstreaker had ended up doing the senate’s ultimate goal for them: in his frantic desire to protect Sideswipe through the war, he created a rift that tore at their very being.

He had forced Sideswipe into his shadow.

"Sunstreaker wanted to join the Decepticons, went to a few of Megatron's rallies, was enamored with the brutality of the Pits. Sunny..." Sideswipe's voice trailed off at a whisper. How long had it been since he called Sunstreaker by his nickname? "...Sunny got lost up in the tide.”

"You pulled him out." Prowl assured. "He has never forgotten that. He still draws for you, but he doesn’t show anyone. I don’t think anyone knew he could.“

"Then why did he leave me behind?" Sideswipe whispered, pained and alone, as he looked down to rubbed his chestplate over his spark. 

Prowl took the final step, closed the distance between them, and reached out to tilt his face to look back at him. 

“Because the only thing Sunstreaker thinks about more than himself, is _you_."

Sideswipe couldn't hold back his hitching sob, and Prowl moved his hand to stroke the side of his face in comfort. 

"And Bob." Prowl added dryly, flicking his door wings as he smirked.

Sideswipe snorted as he rubbed optic fluid from face with the palm of his hand, "Fraggit he fucking loves that bug."

"Did you know that he polishes Bob with his expensive waxes?" Prowl wiped a trail of optic fluid with his thumb.

"You don't know the half of it." Sideswipe grinned, vents hitching once more, as he pushed the optic fluid from his left optic while Prowl cleared the right, "I chased that wiggly bug for a full four joors back on Cybertron. Every time I got my arms around him” Sideswipe gestured trapping the bug in his arms and Prowl dropped his hand to his side, “Pop! Slid straight out. He's got sharp spikes all over him!” He threw his hands up in the air in exasperation. “That shouldn't even be possible!"

"You should ask him for the memory file for the time Bob got lose on the Lost Light."

The mirth left Sideswipe's face, and his frame stilled as he looked down at his pedes and chewed his lower lip. 

"We don't...we haven't shared memory files since we went into basic training with the Autobots."

Sucking in a ventilation, Prowl braced himself, uncertain if he had done the right thing.

“I’ve recalled him to here, from Cybertron.”

Cautious blue optics snapped up to meet Prowl’s again. 

Suspicion radiated off Sideswipe’s frame. In his optics, Prowl could see walls starting to form again. 

“Do you get it?” Prowl stated as he reached out again to touch the side of Sideswipe’s face, ghosting his thumb across his lips. “He hid you and your brilliant processor from _me_. For the _entire_ war. _This_ is why I need you. This is why I can’t stop thinking about _you_. Without you, my battle computer can’t be trusted. I’ll do reckless, strategic, things like bring the two of you back to the same planet and give myself a helm ache.”

Sideswipe pressed his face against his touch as they stared at each other.

After two cycling ventilations that stretched into eternity for Prowl, Sideswipe closed what distance remained between them, and pulled Prowl into his arms.

And held him tight.

“I’m not sharing.” Sideswipe hissed into Prowl’s audials.

Pulling back, Sideswipe placed his hands on both sides of Prowl’s face, and smiled down at him. Under that smile, the whispering in Prowl’s battle computer quieted from the constant clamor he had allowed in since the war.

Something good had made it though.

Someone’s skills he hadn’t twisted.

Sunstreaker had made sure of that, at the expense of himself.

“I’m not asking you to.” Prowl promised.

“Good.” A mischievous glimmer formed in Sideswipe’s optics. That particular look Prowl had only ever seen through Sunstreaker’s perspective, and his spark flipped for it to be his own memory now. “Because I can’t wait to see Sunstreaker’s face when he sees Thundercracker doting on Buster. They’re going to compete as they spoil their companions rotten, and glare at each other. Then Sunny’s going to read Thundercracker’s god awful screen plays and draw a storyboard for him as an apology when he laughs at them, then they are going to frag each other senseless.”

Prowl reset his optics and tilted his helm, “That…is a very detailed fantasy.”

Sideswipe smirked down at him, smug.

“Can that fancy battle computer tell me my prediction is wrong with what you now know about Sunny?”

Prowl burst out laughing. 

And their first kiss was with Prowl trying to get his uncontrollable laugher back under control.

Like all the best first kisses in a relationship, it was awkward.

But full of joy.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to resist the siren call of this bunny but Tumblr and enablers happened, but I'd love it if other people played with it and developed it, and took it their own directions, or continued where I started. Have fun with it. I wanted to give poor IDW Sideswipe some plot development.
> 
> I took inspiration for the twin's rift forming from [Dramamelon's ficcys](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9509867/chapters/21510383) that stab me in the gut.


End file.
